It has been well-known that a dye is added into a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material for the purpose of absorbing the rays of light having a specific wavelength so as to work as a filter, prevent halation and irradiation, or control sensitivity. The hydrophilic colloidal layers of the light-sensitive materials are colored with these dyes.
A filter layer has usually been provided onto a light-sensitive emulsion layer or between an emulsion layer and another emulsion layer so as to play a role of making the rays of light incident to an emulsion layer be those of light having a preferable spectral composition. Also, for the purpose of improving the sharpness of photographic images, such a method has been taken in many cases as that an antihalation layer is interposed between an emulsion layer and a support or is provided to the back of the support so that a halation may be prevented by absorbing harmful reflected light which was produced on the interface between the emulsion and the support or on the back of the support; or that harmful reflected or scattered light which was produced by silver halide grains or the like is absorbed by colored emulsion layer so that irradiation may be prevented.
The dyes which may be used with the above-mentioned purposes shall satisfy the following requirements: they shall have the characteristics of absorption spectra which excellently meet the purposes of use; they can completely be decolored in the course of photographic processing steps and/or can easily be eluted from a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material so that no residual color stain can be produced with the dyes after completing a development process: a photographic emulsion cannot be affected by fog, desensitization, or the like; and the stability on standing can be excellent and neither discoloration nor color-fading can be produced in solutions or in the silver halide photographic light-sensitive material.
Heretofore, many efforts have been made and a number of dyes have been proposed with the purpose of discovering the dyes capable of satisfying the above-mentioned requirements. For example, the oxonol dyes described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,247,127, Japanese patent Examined Publication Nos. 39-22069(1964) and 55-10059(1980), and so forth, have been well-known.
However, the present fact is that there has not yet been any dye having excellent characteristics capable of fully satisfying the above-mentioned requirements and of being applied to photographic light-sensitive materials.
In particular, a type of oxonol dyes having a carbamoyl group at the 3rd position have been described in British Patent No. 1,338,799, and Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) Nos. 51-77327(1976), 58-143342(1983), 59-111641(1984), and 63-139944(1988), and so forth. Among them, the dyes described in British Patent No. 1,338,799 and Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 51-77327(1976) have not any solubilizing group in the molecular structures thereof and, therefore, insoluble to water or hardly soluble thereto.
In addition, the photographic processing has usually been carried out within a short time and under the low alkaline conditions. It is therefore, difficult to make these dyes elute completely from photographic material. It is also considered that the dyes having once been decolored may recur, or that the decolored dyes may exert a bad influence photographically even if they do not recur. Therefore, particularly in the case of using such a dye in a multi-layered photographic material for the above-mentioned purpose, it is desired to make the dye water-soluble by introducing a water-solubilizing group into the dye. Resultingly, such a water-soluble dye may readily be eluted from the light-sensitive material in the course of the developing process. Therefore, the dye does not remain as it is.
In addition, if the dye is water-soluble, there is such an advantage that the dye may be added in the form of a aqueous solution into a photographic material. On the other hand, if the dye is hardly soluble to water, an organic solvent or the like should be additionally used in combination. It is undesirable to do so from the viewpoint of harmfulness thereof.
The dyes described in Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication Nos. 58-143342(1983), 59-111641(1984) and 63-139944(1988), each of which is an oxonol dye having a water-solubilizing group and a carbamoyl group at the 3rd position thereof, are not satisfactory in their characteristics, particularly in decoloring property. Therefore, these dyes have been required to be further improved from the above-mentioned viewpoint.